Movie review: “Much Ado About Nothing” (2012)

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“Come, lady, come. You have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.”

“Indeed, my lord. He lent it me a while and I gave him use for it…a double heart for his single one. Merry, once before he won it of me with false dice. Therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.”

When presenting any adaptation of Shakespeare to a modern audience, the filmmaker has some tricky choices to make up front, and faces any number of potential hurdles, not the least of which is the Bard himself. Though many of his themes and much of the behavior he relates are universal and relatable across time, there comes along also the nagging sense that Shakespeare’s works now have an instantly anachronistic quality about them, as if in over their years of being so intensely studied and performed and regularly adapted anew, they have passed some weird sort of expiration date in the larger consciousness of the consumer class, that time has, in some cruel way, begun to decisively pass them by. Continue reading “Movie review: “Much Ado About Nothing” (2012)”